


And the shields are left to rust

by Inkfire



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s07e10 Hide, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 14:58:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkfire/pseuds/Inkfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Staring at a blue box, she can feel it staring back—deep within, deeper than she knows herself. Clara and the TARDIS never do get along. A tiny drabble set during Hide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the shields are left to rust

**Author's Note:**

> A tiny Clara drabble, set during Hide as the Doctor and Clara rush back to the TARDIS. It's my first time writing her. Happened at 5 in the morning too, hopefully that doesn't say a thing about the quality ;) Enjoy!
> 
> (Title is a line from the Florence And The Machine song _What the Water Gave Me_.)

Through the garden in the rushing of the storm, they ran.

Clara pushed on her shorter legs to keep up with him. So much running they always did—it was ludicrous, really, and ludicrous she enjoyed it so much. She could think of a fair few other ludicrous things, however, and only half-heartedly scowled as the rain slapped her face—stupid, creepy storm, as if she should be scared by _that_ part of things, stupid way-too-freaking-tall alien whose arm she was firmly clinging to.

( _Don't trust him. There's a sliver of ice in his heart._ )

It might just be too late. Oh, how she hated to think that.

Having the gall to tut at her, he rushed ahead. Into his box, disappearing there.

And Clara's heart sank, and she cursed herself for her foolishness. The miracle box stood so ominous. Its door shut, merciless, and she had to rush, with a sickening jolt in her chest. As she eventually entered, her lungs felt tight and the lights overhead flashed so _coldly_ at her. She felt tiny and out of place, like her rumpled, dripping umbrella, at the entrance of a temple.

_Something off, not right_. A buzz at the back of her neck, an icy shiver like those she had felt getting up in the mornings, after—when her mother hadn't been there to greet her with a smile, anymore. Like when she had stood in the Soviet submarine, death hovering around and the Doctor running off ahead.

The wheels of fate, turning. Oh, silly Clara, she was more sensible than that. She shook the umbrella.

A faint rumbling from the engines.

_Oh, shut up_. But she dared not move closer at first, as the Doctor skipped around the console, mad flailing limbs somehow arranging themselves in the allotted space and over the controls with a precision she normally wouldn't have expected from him. But he fell into place there, when he would stand out so ridiculously anywhere else. She could have grinned in fondness.

She didn't.

A cat indeed, an old cat with time claws, subtly brushing somewhere beneath her skin. A cat had those mysterious haughty eyes. And that TARDIS may not have _eyes_ , but she had stared Clara down all right, blue and glowing, dripping into the night like something eternal standing there. Now, inside, those lights flashed accusing, blinding her for seconds at a time. The Doctor danced in the gleam, at ease.

_Do shut up. Drop the dignified-time-thing act. You want him for yourself, plain and simple._

And the umbrella dripped on, dismal.

"You need a place to keep this."

"I've got one," he said, pointing somewhere.

He didn't.


End file.
